Rainy Night Discussions
by GRINtelligencer
Summary: On a rainy night, Ruwalk finds Tetheus smoking as he watches the rain in a dark mood. Talks of Tetheus' past ensue as Ruwalk asks why he always wears gloves. Oneshot


**Rainy Night Discussions **

Dane Soar

**Rating:** K+

**Summery: **On a night the rainy night Ruwalk finds Tetheus smoking as he watches the rain in a dark mood. Talks of his past ensue.

**Characters/Pairings:** Tetheus, Ruwalk

**Comments:** I've gotten the impression that Dragon Knights is a medieval type story, but I'm not quiet sure. Then I read a really good story with smoking in it and wanted to one of my own. Actually now that I think of it, one of the covers had someone smoking on it didn't it?

And keep in mind that we don't know much about Dragon Knights and there are a lot of gaps out information. We don't really know a lot about Tetheus' past so I took some liberties.

**Spoilers: **Tetheus' true nature and that's about it

**Focus: **Smoking, Tetheus' past, why does Tetheus always wear gloves?

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As night fell over Dragoon, a storm swept over the castle, bringing the dark even faster. The rain poured down in a torrential downfall, like a solid wall of water. There was wind for a few hours, driving the rain sideways and ripping leaves off trees. Then abruptly, it was gone, and there was just the steady sound of rain hitting the roofs of homes, and a little farther away, the Dragon Lord's castle.

And Ruwalk hadn't been looking for Tetheus; he had found him by chance.

"Why are you out here of all places?" he asked him, resting a hand on the balcony and looking out into the rain. "There are drier places to be, you know." There wasn't overhang by the balcony, and much of the rain splashed in on them.

"I know," replied Tetheus vaguely. It appeared that he had been there for some time; his hair hung in sopping locks in his face, and his clothes were wet.

Then Ruwalk realized that Tetheus was smoking, a habit not uncommon among the Dragon fighters, but completely unexpected from their Captain. He couldn't recall ever knowing that his fellow Officer smoked.

Apparently noticing the look on Ruwalk's face, Tetheus raised an eyebrow and cupped his cigarette in his hands to protect it from the elements. "I don't make a habit out of this on most nights."

"Then what brought you out here tonight?"

Tetheus stared into the rain for so long, Ruwalk thought that he wasn't going to reply. Then finally he sighed. "I was a fool, I made a mistake, and my fighters paid for it."

"Yes, I remember now, it was hardly your fault that you lost that battle. You can't always win every one, Tetheus. It's only luck that you haven't done so before now."

Noticing his cigarette had burned down, Tetheus flicked the burnt out butt over the balcony, and both of them watched as the tiny light bounded off roofs and parapets before going out.

"Perhaps you were able to forget about it, but it is a bit harder for me to do so. I lost fifty of my best fighters through a blunder."

"You're being to hard on yourself, everyone eventually makes a mistake. Remember when Alfeegi miscalculated his sums, and messed up all those account books? It took him months to straighten it out. I remember when he first found out, I've never seen him so close to crying." However, Ruwalk's attempt to make a joke didn't amuse Tetheus, because his closed expression didn't change a hair.

The Black Dragon Officer took out another cigarette and rubbed his forefinger and thumb together, muttering a rudimentary spell to summon fire. A tiny light flickered into life on his fingertip, which Tetheus touch briefly to the cigarette before blowing out. The action scorched his glove a bit, enough to show the skin beneath.

Ruwalk had always wondered about that. The gloves that Tetheus wore constantly had to serve some sort of purpose. However, at any other time it would have rude to ask, but tonight…

"I must ask, those gloves, is there a reason that you wear them?"

Glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, Tetheus breathed a deep lungful of air, then slowly let it out in another long sigh. Without answering he reached to his wrist and stripped off the glove.

Seeing the hand beneath it, Ruwalk knew his eyes went wide and he gasped quietly. The fingers of Tetheus's left hand were crippled, as if broken and healed the wrong way. They stuck out at slightly wrong angles and drooped a bit to far toward his palm.

"The glove helps keep them in the proper place," explained Tetheus shortly pulling it back on. "and it would look ridiculous to wear only one glove."

"How did…how did that happen?" asked Ruwalk. "I never knew that…" he shook his head not really sure what to say.

"It is not a thing widely known."

"If I might ask, what happened?"

"It's a long story."

"We have a while." Ruwalk propped his elbows on the railing, feeling the cool spray from the rain on his face and not looking at the other dragon. "Does it have something to do with you being a former member of the Demon Clan?"

The silence from beside him spoke volumes.

"Is it something that you do not wish to speak of?"

"No, it is just something I have not often spoken of."

"Well," Ruwalk was still not looking at him, but out in the rain, almost as if he were afraid that if he turned, the normally quiet Tetheus would fall silent once again.

Then slowly, a little painfully, the story came, like a wound being lanced. "It is not common knowledge, but while I was still part of the Demon Clan, I was a ranking officer in Nadil's Army. However, I made a mistake," he laughed bitterly, shortly. "You know, I don't even remember what it was anymore. But I was stripped of my rank and thrown into prison. The prisons of our race are never particularly good places to be, and this was no exception.

I remember it was a small cell, small enough that I would touch both walls with my arms at the same time."

With a nod Ruwalk let him know that he was listening.

"And because the cells were partially underground, even though there was a tiny window in my cell, it was at ground level with the courtyard outside." Out of the corner of his eye, Ruwalk saw Tetheus look at his crippled hand. "This happened because I didn't something foolish. There was a disturbance in the courtyard, that was where prisoners were executed, and something must have gone wrong. There was fighting, and I remember a broken sword blade landed near my window. I reached for it." _Because to a prisoner, something with a sharp edge means freedom, even if it is the permanent type. Back then Tetheus was willing to do anything to get out of that hellhole. _"But before I could a guard spotting me and brought his boot-heel down on my hand." _He remembers the crunch, the pain as the guard, laughing, ground his hand into the stone and bones broke._ "I withdrew my hand as soon as I could, but by then, the damage was already done… that was three days before the Dragon Lord's forces attacked the prison and destroyed it."

_The ceiling had come down on him, from some explosive force as the entire dungeon complex collapsed. By some fluke or another, he had been trapped between two fallen ceiling slabs, unable to move, still cradling his wounded hand, but alive._

_Then for five hours he was pinned under the stones in the dark and quiet. Tetheus remembers talking to himself, singing, screaming anything to keep away the silence, until his voice was all but gone._

_He swears that he must be going insane, but those who were insane didn't have to wonder about it…right?_

_And then…light…and rocks shifted above him. In the newly formed gap a blonde head had appeared and looked down on him._

"_There's one under here." The man, who would later introduce himself as Lykouleon, the Dragon Lord himself, called back over his shoulder, then said back down to him. "We'll get you out, don't fear. Can you move?"_

_He'd reached up to the man, half mad with pain and fear, not knowing that he'd reached up with his right hand. But instead of being struck down as before, Lykouleon took it gently in both of his. "You're injured, I see, we have a healer in out group, you'll be well cared for. Now give me your other hand and I see if I can pull you up myself." Lykouleon smiled the gentlest smile Tetheus had even seen._

_Tetheus had known his entire life was about to change from that moment onward._

"Not long after that I was appointed to the post of the Black Dragon Officer."

"And shortly after that I met you." remarked Ruwalk. He remembered it probably as well as Tetheus did. They had been wary and careful of each other. Ruwalk was half afraid that Tetheus was going to eat him; he'd looked so dark and threatening. "That was a long time ago, wasn't it?"

"It doesn't seem very long ago to me."

"Really?"

"No. I was incredibly lucky to get this post and I can never forget it. My success or failure reflects on the Lord's judgment."

The other man shook his head. "You act as if everyone is looking over your shoulder constantly til you make a mistake. Not many people these days even remember that you weren't part of the Dragon Clan originally, and if they did, you've done more than enough to show that you're a competent Head of Security. One mistake is just that. One mistake. We all make one eventually," he chuckled. "and mine was rather nasty." Then sobered. "Because of all the responsibility we have, our mistakes tend to be bigger and messier than other people's, but we make them just as much."

Tetheus shook his head and took another breath of smoke from the shortening cigarette. "Does nothing ever make you lost that carefree nature?"

"Alfeegi in full rage, and heading my way."

"I can sympathize."

Ruwalk snorted.

"Captain!" called out a voice from the far end of the balcony.

Both men almost jumped at the sudden shout that broke the spell of the rain. A Dragon Fighter waved at them. "Captain, Alfeegi has send a runner with the death letter forms for you to fill out!"

Stubbing out his cigarette Tetheus called back to him. "Very well, I'll attend to it in a moment."

The Dragon Fighter waved to show he'd head and move off jogging with his eagerness to get back to somewhere warm.

"Death letter forms?" inquired Ruwalk in an undertone.

"Outlines for the letters I have to write to the families of my dead men," explained Tetheus.

It sounded like a grim job to Ruwalk. Who would want to have to sit and write all those letters, remembering each dead Fighter as you did so?

"Before you do that, you should change into some dry clothes, we might be immortal, but every now and then someone _does_ end up sick."

Tetheus blinked at him for a moment, then looked down at himself briefly and noticed, apparently for the first time, that he was soaked. "Of course, I had better be leaving, otherwise it will take all night."

Nodding to him Ruwalk waved him off. "Well off with you, it will look better tomorrow."

Tetheus flicked the butt of his cigarette over the edge of the balcony; they both watched the little light bounce off roofs far, far below, until it winked out.

"We all have to fall some time," he muttered darkly, then turned to go indoors.

Chuckling at the back of his receding fellow Officer Ruwalk, once he was out of earshot remarking to himself. "But you forgot you've fallen already. And you managed to land and get back up." he looked back out into the rain. "Which is just like you."

END 

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